Tuesday 20 April '10 show notes

  • Guests:
    • Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum.
    • Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy-UC Berkeley, author of 12 books including "Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life".
    • Aaron Swartz, Co-founder Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC)
  • Topics:
    • Are teabaggers, the media and people like Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin moving the country so far right that it's dangerous to democracy?
    • Why shouldn't we be teaching our kids that the earth is in trouble?
    • Financial reform...does it go far enough?
    • Is "too big to fail" too big for jail?
  • Bumper Music:
  • Today's newsletter has details of today's guests and links to the major stories and alerts that Thom covered in the show, plus lots more. If you haven't signed up for the free newsletter yet, please do. If you missed today's newsletter, it is in the archive.
  • Quote: "Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money." ~ Cree Indian Proverb.
  • Clip: McCain On Palin’s ‘Reload’ Rhetoric: ‘Those Are Fine, They’re Used All The Time’" by Igor Volsky.
    MCCAIN: Ann, I have seen the rhetoric of targeted districts as long as I’ve been in politics. Please. This is — any threat of violence is terrible, but to say that there is a targeted district or that we “reload” or go back in to the fight again, please….Those are fine. They’re used all the time… Those words have been used throughout of my political career…That rhetoric and kind of language is just part of the political lexicon. [...]

    CURRY: I think it is the “reload” and “crosshairs” that’s caused a lot of people to be concerned, Senator.

    MCCAIN: Maybe it has and we condemn any violence, any threats of violence. But I’ve heard all of that language throughout my political career…that anger should be channeled into voter registration and go continue the struggle that we’re in to regain America and stop mortgaging our children’s futures.
  • Clip: Rep. King Justifies Suicide Attack On IRS: Sympathizes With Hatred Of IRS, Hopes For Its Destruction" by Lee Fang, Feb 22nd, 2010.
    ThinkProgress: Do you think this attack, this terrorist attack, was motivated at all by a lot of the anti-tax rhetoric that’s popular in America right now?

    Rep. Steve King: I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax. [...] It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

    ThinkProgress: So some of his grievances were legitimate?

    Rep. Steve King: I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back. … It is intrusive and we can do a better job without them entirely.
  • Clip: Savage said he sees women who wear burqas as "hateful Nazi[s]" who want to "kill your children" July 03, 2007.
    You know, when I see a woman walking around with a burqa, I see a Nazi. That's what I see -- how do you like that? -- a hateful Nazi who would like to cut your throat and kill your children. Don't give me this crap that they're doing it out of a sacred ritual or rite. It's not required by the Quran that a woman walk around in a seventh-century drape. She's doing it to spit in your face. She's saying, 'You white moron, you, I'm going to kill you if I can'. That's how I see it! What do you want me to do, mince words with you? I'm not going to mince words. We're too far gone in this country.
  • Clip: Savage ridiculed Ethiopians, declaring they "have flies around their eyes"; labeled Islam "a bloodthirsty religion", October 24, 2006.
    It's a bloodthirsty religion that's practiced over there by a bunch of throwbacks, and we're to kill 'em.
  • Clip: Morris: "Those crazies in Montana who say, 'We're going to kill ATF agents because the U.N.'s going to take over' -- well, they're beginning to have a case", March 31, 2009.
    Those crazies in Montana who say, 'We're going to kill ATF agents because the U.N.'s going to take over' -- well, they're beginning to have a case."
  • Clip: Beck likens himself to "Israeli Nazi hunters": "to the day I die, I am going to be a progressive hunter, January 20, 2010.
    You are going to learn so much on Friday. We are taking a huge risk on Friday by trying to teach America history that has been completely erased in the history books. And I'm telling you, 15 minutes into this documentary, if you haven't had at least I think probably four times, I know the pieces to this documentary, and probably four times I went, "oh my gosh, why didn't I know that?" I mean, it is staggering, the history, the true history of the socialist progressive communist and Nazi movement. It is staggering. When you piece it all together, and I'm telling you, after this special this Friday we are then going to the progressive handbook and we'll show you what these progressives do.

    I said to my wife last night I am going to be, I am going to be, you know, like the Israeli Nazi hunters. I'm telling you, I'm going to find these big progressives, and to the day I die, I'm going to be a progressive hunter. I am going to find these people that have done this to our country and expose them. I don't care where, I don't care if they're in nursing homes, I'm going to expose what they have done and make sure that the people understand. Because our constitution, our Republic, if it survives, will only survive because the people are waking up and through the grace of God, because we are that close to losing our Republic.
  • Clip: They Thought They Were Free By Milton Mayer.
    What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security...

    This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. ...

    To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
  • Clip: "Michael Reagan: ‘Take Them Out And Shoot Them’ by David Neiwert, June 14, 2008.
    There is a group that’s sending letters to our troops in Iraq … claiming 9/11 was an inside job — oh, yeah, yeah — and that they should rethink why they’re fighting. Who — we ought to — excuse me, folks, I’m going to say this: We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them.

    Really. Just find the people who are sending those letters to our troops to demoralize our troops and do what they are doing, you take them out, they are traitors to our country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that, deal with it. But anyone who would do that doesn’t deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors — that’s what they are — and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullet.

    ...

    How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don’t blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.
  • Clip: Responding to Krugman, Beck claimed of FEMA conspiracy theories: "Never said anything like it" (March 3 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends).
    BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): You're talking about Eastern Europe, too. And they have stood by us in everything we've done -- the Pols and --

    BECK: They understand --

    KILMEADE: -- the Czech Republic have been sold out with this letter.

    BECK: They understand freedom. We don't even understand freedom anymore. We are a country that is headed towards socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest imagination. I have to tell you, I'm doing a story tonight that I wanted to debunk these FEMA camps. I'm tired of hearing -- you know about them?

    STEVE DOOCY (co-host): Sure.

    BECK: I'm tired of hearing -- I wanted to debunk them. Well, we've now for several days done research on them. I can't debunk them. And we're going to carry the story tonight.

    KILMEADE: I don't know anything about them, so --

    BECK: It is -- it is our government. If you trust our government, it's fine. If you have any kind of fear that we might be headed towards a totalitarian state, look out, buckle up. There is something going on in our country that is -- ain't good.
  • Clip: We're Being Marched Toward '1984' by Glenn Beck.
    We were afraid the government is growing larger. We are now afraid of the exact things that I was called crazy for even suggesting just a couple of years ago: Things like nationalizing our banks; putting the government in charge of private payrolls; moving to nationalize our auto industry and — here's the key one — using the word "crisis" to obtain the unprecedented power needed to make it all happen.

    It all adds up to me having to now admit that I was wrong. Our government is not marching our country down the road toward communism or even socialism. They're marching us toward a brand of non-violent fascism or, to put it in another way, they're marching us toward "1984."
  • Clip: They Thought They Were Free" By Milton Mayer.
    Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'

    "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. ...

    But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked - if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

    "And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jew swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.
  • Clip: Savage: "Liberalism is, in essence, the HIV virus", July 11, 2006.
    How do I relate the rise of radical Islam, with its restrictions, with its throwback mentality, and with its hatred and its murderous nature, with the progressive movement in the West? It's quite simple. You have to think about biology to understand it. You have to think of the AIDS virus, which is symptomatic, actually symbolic rather, of what I'm talking about.

    The AIDS virus is actually quite symbolic. It's a retrovirus and it invades the body but it doesn't really cause infection for awhile. It lays in wait. And while it lays in wait, the retrovirus, the HIV virus, it starts to attack the immune system itself. And only after the immune system itself is weakened can infections arise within the human being that has been infected with the HIV virus.

    This is what liberalism is. Liberalism is, in essence, the HIV virus, and it weakens the defense cells of a nation. What are the defense cells of a nation? Well, the church. They've attacked particularly the Catholic Church for 30 straight years. The police, attacked for the last 50 straight years by the ACLU viruses. And the military, attacked for the last 50 years by the Barbara Boxer viruses on our planet.
  • Clip: Savage on "double-talking slut" Barbara Walters: "[T]he woman is vermin", March 20, 2007.
    Notice what this double-talking slut just did, this mind-slut Barbara Walters... And I stick by those words. She's an empty mind-slut. She'd peddle anything for a ratings point." ... That mental prostitute, Bra-buh-buh-buh Walters? It sickens me... I think that the woman is vermin, I think she's dirt.
  • Clip: The violent rhetoric of Senator Jeff Kruse by Kari Chisholm.
    We have super majorities in both Salem and in Washington, D.C., and they are moving as absolutely as fast as they can before the revolution. And the revolution is coming,” Kruse said. “This is where it starts. It is not a revolution of guns, God I hope it's not — but I do have a gun.
  • Clip: Vice President Dick Cheney on Meet the Press, September 14, 2003.
    Iraq sits on top of 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, very significant reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia.

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